Z: Steel Soldiers
Patch - November 9th 2015
There were a few distinct issues reported, most of which we were able to replicate across Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 machines using a variety of DPI scaling settings within Windows. The latest version of the game now appears to scale the graphics and mouse correctly regardless of what resolution or DPI setting you're using and should work correctly in windowed and fullscreen modes.
Changes in this patch include:
- Fixed issue where mouse was locked to the top left corner.
- Fixed issue where the game rendered off-screen.
- Fixed issue where the game would launch in a very small window.
- Fixed issues with NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution.
- Added 2560x1440 window resolution for high res monitor users.
- Made F12 key hide the HUD and Mouse cursor (for Steam screenshots).
We're working on fixing other reported issues and want to hear if players encounter issues or have any feedback and suggestions for improvement.
The Big Autumn 2015 Update
Our latest update includes some fixes, new features, and graphical changes which we think improve the game and provide an all round better gameplay experience:
Fixes:
Fixed black textures on Intel GPUs with newer drivers and/or Windows 10.
Fixed shader issues experienced on certain GPUs.
Fixed a crash when using the Weather Centre.
Fixed a stall after viewing the cutscene after completing the final level of the campaign.
Fixed a bug in the line-of-sight system which affected the visibility of enemy units at the very edge of the visible range.
Fixed a bug where vehicles would rotate on the spot the wrong-way before moving.
Fixed a bug where the Cargo Bug and Helicopters would take a very long time to land.
Fixed visual bug where terrain LOD would cause popping while zooming in and out.
Fixed visual bug where terrain reflections would not always reflect correctly.
Fixed a bug with robot bounding boxes causing some strange looking bullet collisions.
Fixed a bug with the construction robot beam not correctly animating between construction robot and whatever he was healing or constructing.
Fixed a bug with the technician’s conversion beam effect.
Fixed a visual bug where a building was untextured in level 10
Fixed a bug where power bars would appear in the top left of the screen.
Features:
Locked the mouse to the window, especially useful for players with multiple monitors or those wanting to play the game in a window.
Various improvements to AI and pathfinding. Not only is the algorithm now much faster but it may now also return more optimal paths.
Added Steam Cloud Save support.
Added game timer to the screen. On Skirmish Time Limit mode, it will count down and turn red when nearing end of the game.
Robots now show visible signs of damage by emitting sparks, smoke, and fire, as they become increasingly more damaged.
Updated idle states of robots so they look more natural while standing around.
Enabled anisotropic filtering by default.
Mouse click now skips cutscenes (as well as the space bar).
Integrated Steam’s internal crash reporting system.
Added options to change fog-of-war and shadow quality for low end machines.
Graphical changes:
Added true fog-of-war effect. This enhances the current fog-of-war (which simply hid enemy units not in range of your own units) by obscuring the map and objects directly.
Added slight animation to trees and bushes.
Improved lighting of the terrain providing more contrast between light and shade.
Updated terrain colouring and blending to better show steep cliffs and hills.
Added self-casting shadows to the terrain.
Made vehicle tracks more persistent and more transparent leaving a lot more detail on the map as the game progresses.
Significantly increased number of trees in the forest levels.
Added lighting and shadows to terrain details and decals.
Updated building textures to make them look more consistent when placed together.
Enhanced the water shader to improve specular reflections.
Refactored lighting across all objects for consistency.
Improved the glow effect around Zod and other major characters.
Replaced mission markers on the planet with TransGlobal and MegaCom logos.
The Skirmish Update
We've been working hard on fixing graphical issues with skirmish mode and have fixed a number of other issues along the way. Skirmish mode is still under active development while we work on fixing some issues and thus we have marked it as being beta. We've tested it internally and it seems to work well but we're interested in knowing if you have any feedback or suggestions for us for skirmish mode, or for the game in general.
This update include the following changes:
- Skirmish mode now available for beta testing.
- Increased maximum zoom level.
- Fixed bug related to Windows DPI settings (playing on High DPI / 4k monitors).
- Fixed some objects which rendered all-white.
- Rewrote shaders to improve performance.
- Made build grid easier to see.
- Made joystick selection box easier to see.
- Now show build timers when buildings are active.
- Now show armour and shield bars for damaged units at all times.
- Show white borders round power bars of current selected units.
- Removed fading on terrain decals.
- Fixed mouse issue with level 1.
- Bricks and Mortar achievement now actually achievable.
- General performance improvements.
Here are a few screenshots showing some of the changes in this build:
Zoom out further:
We've increased the max zoom distance so you can now zoom out much further. This makes the game much easier to play, especially on the larger levels!
Fixed the Bricks and Mortar achievement:
Some players reported they were unable to unlock this achievement. We found out that our code checking that you had built each type of building was flawed. The reason was that you never 'build' a shipyard. Your construction robot actually 'repairs' the shipyard as the frame already exists. We've now handled this and the achievement unlocks correctly.
Enabled skirmish beta:
We've been wanting to enable skirmish mode for a while but there were a number of issues with the graphics and the code in general. We've now fixed most issues and while we're working on improving the mode further we have enabled it for beta testing.
We hope you have fun testing Skirmish mode and hope our other changes have fixed issues that some users reported with the game :).
-TickTock Games
Quick Patch
The patch also included a few new particle effects which should also fix the issue where smoke and fire appeared to use an alternate texture in certain situations.
We're keeping an eye on the crash reporting system while we work on Skirmish mode and hope to have more news soon :)
Lassar's Tech Center Patch
It's patch time again, this time we have a few fixes for the game which we hope will fix some major issues with the game that many players were experiencing.
First up is the fix for level 18. We had a number of programmers look in to this issue where Lassar could not enter the Tech Center in order to complete the mission and we couldn't see what was causing the bug. We had a new programmer recently join the team and he managed to figure it out and has confirmed the problem no longer exists in this new version!
We've also fixed the issue where bunkers would become very hard to destroy which was a side-effect of us increasing the robot sizes from the original game.
Also in this patch are a number of crash fixes and general bug fixes which we've been able to fix using the crash reports we've been recieving from our players.
We're continuing our work on skirmish mode and may have another few small updates for the game released before we're ready for skirmish to be released to the public. Have fun and let's hope more of you can now progress past level 18!
Did someone say... Skirmish?
Since our last update we have received a number of crash reports from players which pointed us to some very strange little issues in the original game code for Z Steel Soldiers.
We've used the information in these crash reports to help fix some potential crashes and memory issues, including:
- Crash in music system when playing a particular music track.
- Crash in particle system under certain circumstances.
- Crash due to map nodes being corrupt.
- Crash due to list of lights not being cleared.
- Memory leak between levels now fixed.
- Various small issues which could potentially lead to crashes.
We've also now updated our crash reporting system even further to help fix the remaining issues a few players are encountering.
Alongside this we've made a few other changes:
- Improved performance a little in the rendering.
- Altered the robot textures (coloured through shader).
- Fixed a few small rendering issues.
And the big news, we've expanded our programming team and have had one of our new programmers working on getting Skirmish mode running.
There are a number of challenges to overcome before we release Skirmish mode but the good news is that it seems to play fairly well and the original map data works with our updated engine. We will be working on getting Skirmish mode complete and will post our progress here :)
We're also aware some players are still having issues with level 18 (having Lassar enter the Tech Centre). We're investigating this bug again and hope to have a quick fix released soon.
Here are a few screenshots of Skirmish gameplay which will be coming to Z Steel Soldiers soon (click to view larger versions):
Quick Update
We've been busy here at TickTock working on extending Z Steel Soldiers as well as getting it ready to ship on a few more platforms. We've been taking note of all the feedback we've received and are currently preparing an update for the game and also plan to spend more time fixing smaller issues over the coming months.
Today we've pushed out an update to the game which now includes a crash reporting system. We are aware some users are experiencing crashes in the game and we have been unable to reproduce any of these on any of the machines in our office. The new crash reporting system will intercept the crash and allow you to send a report back to us which will hopefully shed some light on the actual cause of the crashes so we can fix them before pushing out our next update.
We're also looking at the technician issues, some of which we resolved with our last update but many people still have problems with them. We're hoping we can nont only improve the game with our next few updates but also make it work correctly for everyone on all systems.
Thanks for playing :)
Major Bug Fix
Thanks to community member Marauder2k9 for identifying a fix for the issue. We'd been scouring the code for any issues related to the use of Lassar and Tech Centres, but as it turns out we could fix the bug by editing the level definition file!
We're now looking in to the crashes some people are experiencing in heavy fire-fights and will have a fix for that in our next patch.
Thanks for playing and please remember to use the forum to leave feedback :)
Incoming Reinforcements
The release notes for the latest patch are as follows:
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Technicians not capturing buildings.
- Fixed compatibility issues with certain older video cards.
- Performance improvements to rendering.
- Fixed startup crash on devices with non-Latin characters in username
- Fixed music playback to reduce repeats.
- Fixed minimap in tutorial bug.
- Fixed missing heroes due to case sensitivity bug.
- Fixed corrupted save game bug.
- Extended the new shadow code to work on more machines.
Graphical Improvements
- Robots now show team colours.
- Improved character animations.
- Enhanced particle and environmental effect.
- Bridges enlarged.
- No-go areas updated.
- Animals spread out and added more.
- Fixed various floating objects.
- Added Zod icon.
- More lights on certain buildings.
Thanks again for all your support and please do let us know if you have feedback or suggestion as we make our plans for future updates :)
The original cut scenes are back!
This update includes the following changes:
- Intro videos and cut scenes re-enabled! We know this will please a lot of you who're fans of the original game. We decided not to include them on launch as we found some incompatibilities with certain PC configurations but we have now resolved those issues so you can all enjoy the FMVs which appear at the start of each theatre of war (if you've played through the levels already you can watch the videos by selecting to re-play the first level of each unique type).
- Fixed a bug where the leaderboards would show [unknown] instead of showing names of players.
- Fixed a crash on the leaderboards when switching to some of the later levels.
- Fixed a bug with the Technical Takedown achievement which would award you the achievement after capturing only a single enemy building.
- Added log output to help diagnose issues some players are having.
We're taking note of all feedback that has been given by the community and we're looking in to the issues that have been reported. We hope to keep pushing out updates to maintain the game and improve it over time with the help of the community.
Thanks for playing :)